I wrote this a while ago. I was planning a multi parter Roomies fic and nothing seemed to be working, this was a random one-shot written in the midst of all that. It's been up on a few other sites, and people seem to get it, which is always good. I just hope you enjoy. Read, and lemme know! Thanks guys )

Nina

Watching Him Sleep

Part 1/1

He's asleep on the sofa when I get home. Sprawled out, legs splayed and arms everywhere while the TV blares out, advertising the latest miracle hair colour. The film he had undoubtedly been watching had long since finished. I couldn't help but smile as I placed my bag in the chair next to him, careful not to make too much noise. I was exhausted, the late shift had comprised of two GSWs, an MVA with three major injuries and the usual ER mixture of ODs, sprains and aches. But seeing him there, so peaceful and still made all that stress evaporate. I felt like I could watch him forever.

I once read somewhere, probably in some magazine a school friend or a university roommate had left lying around, certainly in nothing that I would ever read, how to tell if someone was your soul mate. According to the magazine if you found someone whom you could watch sleeping, and not in a creepy stalker way, in a way that just watching them breathing is enough to keep you enthralled, a way that you can love someone so much that you can watch them sleep all night and never get bored, then they were your 'one'. I'd laughed at it at the time, had probably mocked the friend to whom the magazine belonged. How could you watch a person sleep, just sleep? I was adamant that anyone would be bored after a few minutes, it was just sleep after all. And then how could that be a revelation of love? How could you tell if you had found your soul mate just by being able to watch them sleep? It didn't make sense. To me love was something to be worked out, a gradual and mutual respect. It could be condensed to just one tiny insignificant detail. You couldn't base a relationship on simply the ability to watch a person sleep.

But there was just something in the way his arm was so carefully folded around his own body, almost like he was trying to hug himself, and the way his thumb rested dangerously close to his mouth. Not quite there, but still a remembrance of those childhood nights when just a thumb was enough to soothe you to sleep. It is as I am watching him that I fully realise for the first time what that article was trying to say.

It's not about watching them sleep, sleep is irrelevant. It's about being so entranced in a person that you can watch them do anything. Everything is exciting and new, beautiful and soothing just because it is them doing it. I realise in that moment that I have been watching him for over an hour, the way his chest rises and falls as his breathing speeds up and then steadies as he breathes. It's about how I know that I could watch him all night and never get bored. I could kiss him right now but he looks so peaceful that I don't even want to touch him for fear of disturbing him. I knew in that moment that I had found my person, the one person I could watch for all eternity. He was mine.

But I don't wake him, instead I pull the old throw, a gift from my mother many years ago, from the back of the sofa and drape it over his sleeping body before walking into my room, kissing my husband goodnight before I fall into a restless sleep.